9. SHANE DHU FOUNDS A FAMILY
In or about 1580 Dark John MacNauchtan, grandson of the Alexander who did not perish at Flodden, sought adventure in Northeast Ireland. He went over to Antrim to join Sorley Boy Macdonnell, roistering conqueror of what was then a wild region. The consequences were exciting and in the end very satisfactory, for Shane Dhu came in time to manage land matters for Sorley Boy, to marry one of his sisters, and to establish a family on the road to fortune.
Shane Dhu was followed by his son John, presumably his eldest, who lived until 1630. Sorley Boy’s second son, Randal, became first Earl of Antrim. Relationships are indicated by an inscription on a tomb at Bonamargy Friary, near Ballycastle, which reads thus:
HEIRE LYETH THE BODIE OF IHN. MCNAGHTEN
FIRST COUSIN AND SECTARIE TO RANDAL FIRST ERLE OF ANTRIM
WHO DEPARTED THIS MORTALITIE IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD GOD 1630.
That means that John’s mother was a sister of Sorley Boy, father of Randal, and it says John was the first Earl’s secretary. Shane Dhu and his son may not have had the predatory zeal of the Macdonnells, but they had organizing ability and the qualities of administrators.
THERE came a time about the year 1500 when the MacDonalds of the Isles (of the tribe of Somerled, who was part Gael and part Viking) found their rebelliousness against the Scottish government had made Scotland too hot for them. For centuries they had made forays into Antrim, and one of them — Angus Og Macdonnell — was host to the fugitive Robert Bruce on the island of Rathlin in 1306. As early as the sixth century this strong tribe had held the Lordship of the Isles as an independent principality, its domain including the islands of Islay, Jura, and Rathlin, and part or all of the peninsula of Kintyre.
Alexander II moved early in the thirteenth century to quell the tribe of Somerled in the islands of Argyll, with the chief of the Clan MacNauchtan helping; the effort was momentarily successful, and the old Lordship was set up as a sheriffdom. The unruly men of the Isles were not conquered, however. Donnel or Donald, the chief from whom the clan took its name, was Lord of the Isles about 1250. By 1500 the Scottish Kings had so far reduced the power of the MacDonalds as to outlaw the title Lord of the Isles.
About that time Alexander or Alastar MacDonald, who had five or six sons, gave serious attention to strengthening the clan’s foothold in Antrim. Thereafter as Macdonnells, the sons proceeded to annex the lands of the MacQuillans — an Anglo-Norman family sometimes found using the surname MacWilliam — by the device of raiding and warring with their rough and roaring redshank clansmen.
The youngest of the Macdonnell brothers was Sorley Boy (1505-1590), whose name in English would be Charles. In 1558 he was established as Lord of the Route, and by the Route is meant a slab of Antrim extending inland from the sea between the rivers Bush and Bann. After anguishing imprisonment by enemies and harrowing conflicts, Sorley Boy was in position by 1580 to administer his domain.
Consequently Shane Dhu had employment when he came over from Scotland: he became land agent and managing assistant for Sorley Boy. In 1586 the old warrior made peace with the government of Queen Elizabeth by going to Dublin, kneeling before the Queen’s portrait, and kissing one of the slippers on a royal foot in the painting. Elizabeth sent him a charter for his lands, which he tore up and burned with the proud remark that what he had taken by the sword he would keep. Sorley Boy died in 1590, and was followed by his son Sir James, who ruled the Route from the castle of Dunluce until he died in 1601. The story of the high-handed clan may be found in Hill’s Macdonnells of Antrim; my account is based upon Stephen Gwynn’s Highways and Byways in Donegal and Ulster.
Next came Sir Randal Macdonnell, presently to become the first Earl of Antrim. His land agent was "John McNaghten," presumed by some to have been Shane Dhu, but undoubtedly his eldest son. John’s younger brothers (presumably) were Alexander and Daniel of Oldstone. Shane Dhu had lived at Ballymagarry, within a mile of Sorley Boy’s Dunluce Castle, serving as "chief agent and faithful assistant in all matters connected with the regulation and improvement of his property."
John McNaghten lived on at Ballymagarry as secretary to the first Earl, his cousin by virtue of Shane Dhu’s marriage to a Macdonnell lass. Sir Randal had given him a perpetuity lease of sixty acres of the lands of Ballymagarry, thirty acres at Coolnegar, and sixty acres at Benvarden, as revealed by the Antrim Postmortem Inquisitions, seventeenth century, No. 33. Thus a family was founded on 150 acres of lands. Two half-townlands were acquired and added in 1617. Both Alexander and Daniel obtained lands also from the first Earl.
John McNaghten lived until 1630 and was succeeded at Ballymagarry by his eldest son Daniel. The family holdings were growing apace, not remarkable when we know Daniel also was an agent in turn for the Earl. The properties included — and I quote from Major Macnaghten’s documented account — "the half-townland of Ballentegert, the half-townland of Laggathrore, die half-townland of Maghernan, and the half-townland of Ballenlogh, in the barony of Dunluce," as well as "the half-townland of Benvardin, the quarter of Killmoyle, the quarter of Ballenlorgan, two quarters of Ballelegin, one quarter of Ballenasse, the half quarter of Ardtiboylane, and the mill of Ballenasse," on winch the annual rent was 20 pounds. Daniel’s lease required him to plant a specified number of oak, ash, or sycamore trees annually, to pay Crown rent of fifteen shillings, and to give up the best beast in his possession.
Daniel is said in all traditional accounts to have married Catherine, niece of George Dowdall, Archbishop of Armagh, but since the Archbishop died in 1558 it is apparent we have an element of uncertainty. Catherine may have been a grand-niece of the Archbishop, or she may have married a Daniel MacNaghten of the previous generation, uncle to the subject of this paragraph.
The prospering Daniel now under review evidently was a Protestant, as he was spared from forfeiture after the Irish rebellion of 1641. A cousin John MacNaghten, probably of Oldstone, was on the rebel side and a Catholic. When the forces of England, and Scottish troops under General Munro and Sir Duncan Campbell were putting down the rebellion, John and eighty of his followers took refuge in an old Celtic fort, Dunmill, in the townland of Beardiville. They were slain to a man in a war waged with ferocity by both sides.
Dunluce Castle, which as ancient scat of the Macdonnells had undergone much battering in the tempestuous days of Sorley Boy, came to be regarded as unsuited to further use by Randal, second Earl of Antrim, soon after the middle of the seventeenth century. So the Earl bought Ballymagarry, probably from Daniel MacNaghten, and Benvarden House was built to become the chief seat of the MacNaghten family for a while. In a deed dated August 22, 1665, "Daniel MacNaghten of Benvarden in the County of Antrim, Gent," settled upon his eldest son John various estates, including "Ballyboggie, Ballylekine, Ballinesse, with the mill thereunto belonging, Atilyboyland, Ballylogh, Ballvtegart, and Maghercrean," with remainder allotted to his younger sons Alexander and Daniel MacNaghten, and a nephew, Bartholomew MacNaghten of Ballyhunsley. By this time family properties were becoming extensive, and the surname form was appearing as McNaghten or Macnaghten with no change in pronunciation.
John, eldest son, married Helen Stafford of an English family of worth. Her brother Edmund Francis was a great-grandfather of the Duke of Wellington, a fact which has been a source of some gratification to the Macnaghtens. John and Helen Macnaghten had five sons: Francis, b. 1675; Bartholomew, b. 1677; Edmund, 1679-1780; Alexander, b. 1686; and Edward, b. 1692.
When James Stewart, dethroned in the Revolution of 1688-89, sent a French and Irish army from Dublin into Ulster in 1689, Helen took refuge in Londonderry with Edmund and one or two younger children. There they survived the siege that will be described in a later chapter. Edmund, who inherited the property near Bushmills called Beardiville, had singular vitality. His first marriage was childless, and at eighty he married Hannah Johnstone, a woman much younger than himself who bore him two sons: Edmond Alexander and Francis.
This fruitful marriage of an octogenarian was singularly fortunate in consequences because the male lines of the clan in Antrim might have become extinct but for the two sons. Edmond, elder of the two, was not of much help as he was destined to leave no legitimate heir, but he did make a contribution through the revival in his person of the ancient chiefship of the clan. Over in Scotland the MacNaughton clansmen long had wished a chief again, and "on the attestation and at the desire of upwards of 400" of them, the Lyon Court in Edinburgh designated Edmond as chief in 1818 and granted him the right to the chief arms of the clan. Undoubtedly he was the most outstanding man of the family at the time, because, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, he was a member of the Irish Parliament for Antrim, and then Lord of the Treasury. When he died in 1832 the chiefship passed to his younger brother Francis.
In this new chief, Francis, reposed the hope of the clan, and he did not fail while other lines in Antrim were fading. He married Letitia, daughter of Sir William Dunkin of Clogher, who bore six sons and eleven daughters. He was knighted in 1809 when he became Judge of the Supreme Court at Madras, India, through the influence of Sir William, who was a Judge of the Supreme Court in Calcutta. In 1815 he was transferred to the Supreme Court of Bengal, and in 1825 he retired from the bench. In recognition of his distinguished services as a Judge, he was created a baronet in 1836, four years after his brother’s death had made him chief of the Clan MacNaughton. His career was fine and substantial, and his family of seventeen children promised the survival of the baronetcy, the chiefship, and the dignity of an ancient clan.
It was lucky for the family that Sir Francis was winning laurels, because a cousin named John had followed a far different career with a painful end. Every family is entitled to one black sheep who, if picturesque enough, may relieve a clan record of long respectability with a splash of strong color.
Edmund, the octogenarian father of Sir Francis, had an older brother Bartholomew, whose youngest child was John. The escapades of this young man were of such moment as to entitle him to a kind of immortality in the form of a biographical sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography. Written throughout in a tone of hushed disapproval, the sketch begins thus:
"John McNaughton (d. 1761), criminal, son of a gentleman seated at Benvarden near Ballymoney, County Antrim. His father died when he was six, leaving him an estate worth £500 a year. He was educated at Dublin University, but did not graduate."
Left an income with no father to guide him, it is perhaps not strange that John developed into a romantic highflier, whose desperate deeds prompted moralizing articles in the Gentlemen’s Magazine and other high-toned periodicals of the time. At college, his "handsome figure and insinuating address attracted the notice of Sir Clotworthy Skeffington, fourth Viscount Massareene, who introduced him to the best society. His passion for gambling involved him in debt."
The biographical sketch says John retrieved his fortunes by marrying a sister of Lord Massareene’s second wife, a daughter of Henry Eyre of Rowtor, Derbyshire. Major Macnaghten says he married in 1752 Mary, daughter of Richard Daniel, Dean of Down, which no doubt is correct. It was a poor match for the wife. Pressed by friends to take an oath to quit gambling, John behaved for two years; then he returned to the gaming tables with fresh zest. Two children lived only a short while. When his wife was about to bear a third child in 1756, she received news that John was to be arrested for debt. She died from anxiety and shock, the sketch relates, but the baby daughter lived and was named Cassandra. Eventually she married Captain Joseph Hardy.
Financially crushed, John was given at Lord Massereene’s intervention a collectorship at Coleraine in County Londonderry that paid him £200 a year. He gambled away £800 of the King’s money and lost his position; then his estate was sequestered to make good the defalcation.
Andrew Knox of Prehen, Londonderry, member of the Irish Parliament for Donegal, who had known John from childhood, invited him to his home. Observe the poor return the wastrel made to tills old friend of his family. The guest fell in love with his host’s fifteen-year-old daughter Mary Anne — or with her fortune of £5,000. The girl was responsive; the father objected. John tried to claim Mary Anne as a common-law wife; he followed her to Sligo, was challenged to a duel by a friend of Knox, and was wounded. A court set aside a pretended contract of marriage offered in evidence by John, and awarded Knox £500 in damages.
But that is not all: in August 1761 John learned that Mary Ann, her mother, and an aunt were taking the waters at Swanlinbar. Disguised as a sailor, he tried to see the girl and talk with her. The women fled from him to the protection of Lord Mountflorence at Florence Court, County Fermanagh. With conspiring friends, John attacked the Knox carriage on the way to Dublin to a session of Parliament, and fatally wounded Mary Anne. Himself wounded, John hid in a hayloft, where he was captured.
This extraordinary young man was brought to trial December 11, 1761, after a month’s confinement in Lifford gaol. He was carried into court on a bed, dressed in a white flannel waistcoat with black buttons, a parti-colored woolen nightcap, and a crape about his shoulders. John strove to prove the innocence of an accomplice, Dunlap, but justice fell upon both of them. To quote from the DNB sketch:
"His eloquence and resigned bearing are said to have drawn ‘tears from the eyes of many,’ but he was sentenced to be hanged at Strabane 15 December, 1761. The populace imagined that McNaughton had only tried to seize a wife wrongfully detained from him, and in consequence of a general refusal to take part in the work, the gallows was built by an uncle and some friends of Miss Knox.
"McNaughton behaved with the utmost coolness at his execution. The rope broke three times — an accident that entitled him to his liberty — but he bade the sheriff proceed. He and Dunlap were buried in the same grave behind the church of Strabane, County Tyrone."
It is a family supposition that John made his desperate play for Mary Anne Knox and her £5,000 after learning his octogenarian uncle Edmund McNaghten had married a young woman in 1759 and assigned to her a life interest in his estate after his death, whether or not she bore an heir. The tragic outcome of his pursuit of the young girl, after claiming her as his common-law wife, proves him such a reprobate that it may hardly be admissible even to point to his loyalty to his fellow-rogue, Dunlap. When John could not save Dunlap’s life he chose after the hangman’s rope had thrice broken from the weight of his stalwart frame, to signal for a fourth try with a stronger rope and to die with his pal. It was appropriate to bury the two in the same grave. Singular indeed was the popularity of this young man whose "handsome figure and insinuating address," added to the qualities of dashing flamboyance of any beloved pirate, so influenced the neighborhood that the men charged with such work refused to build a gallows on which to hang him. Could the sheriff, even, have suborned the law by providing weak, frayed rope for three tries?
The attention of the reader is now directed to the large family of Sir Francis Macnaghten, first baronet, who had an honorable career as a judge in India. The eldest son and second baronet was Sir Edmund Charles Macnaghten of Dundarave, Bushmills, Antrim (1790-1876). * He married in 1827 Mary Anne, only child of Edward Gwatkin, and was a member of the Irish Parliament for Antrim from 1847 to 185 2. Sir Edmund had five sons:
The second son of Sir Francis, the first baronet, was William Hay Macnaghten, born in Calcutta in 1793, who went to Bengal in the civil service, and who was created a baronet in 1840. While assisting in an effort to quell a native uprising he was assassinated at Cabul on December 23, 1841. The official account related that his body was cut into small bits by furious tribesmen. His baronetcy became extinct since there was no male heir.
The third son of the first baronet was Francis Macnaghten (1798-1869), who made a career in the Bengal civil service. Next came Elliot (1807-1888), member of the Indian Council; Sir Melville, one of his sons, will be noticed in the following chapter. The fifth son was John Dunkin Macnaghten (1810-1862), a Captain in the Bengal Cavalry.
The sixth and last of the sons of Sir Francis, first baronet, was Sir Steuart Macnaghten (1815-1895), who won the degree of Bachelor of Arts at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1835, was called to the bar in the Middle Temple, London, in 1839, and was knighted in 1890. He married first Agnes, only child of James Eastmont of Edinburgh. Left a childless widower in 1863, he married in the following year Lady Emily Frances, daughter of Vice-Admiral Lord Mark Kerr and Charlotte, Countess of Antrim. She died in 1874, and still childless, Steuart three years later married Amy Katherine, only daughter of the Rev. Arthur Thomas of Rottingdean. Sir Steuart Macnaghten was a barrister, and chairman of the Southampton Dock Company; he also was a director in other corporations.
Sir Steuart’s only son to survive childhood was Angus Charles Rowley Steuart Macnaghten, born June 1, 1883. He was a Lieutenant in the Third Battalion of the Black Watch regiment, that was hurried to the continent to resist the German invasion of Belgium in the early weeks of the first World War. The Black Watch, one of the famous regiments of Scotland, won tragic glory by its heavy losses in the first shock of war. Lieutenant Macnaghten was reported missing on October 29, 1914 and is presumed to have been killed in action. His family never has learned anything more than this about his fate. His wife was Hazel Enid, daughter of Colonel Lyndon Irwin of the Indian Army, whom he married on January 3, 1911.
Their only child was Angus Derek lain Jacques Macnaghten, born May 29, 1914, who was only five months old when his father was lost in action. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his A.B. degree in History. Before the second World War he worked in Edinburgh with the National Trust for Scotland, an organization for the preservation of the countryside and of buildings of historic interest. He served in the Intelligence Corps in the war and rose to the rank of Major, "much to my surprise," he says. He is now in London with an offshoot of the Foreign Office called the British Council. He is unmarried and lives in Hadleigh House, Sheet Street, Windsor, Berks. He is the Major Macnaghten to whom previous references have been made: the author of a new clan history.
The family has a remarkable record of military service, barely indicated in this chapter. Its losses in the first World War were grievous.